About
About Mr. 411
“Bruce Pollock is perhaps the most important scholar of American pop music. He also wrote Hipper Than Our Kids, one of the best books about the “boomers” and their generation.” Greg Shaw, Bomp Bookshelf (2001)
“Working Musicians is a marvelous, compulsively readable book—not only an invaluable resource (and an instant education) for any aspiring musician, but also a treasure trove of good reading and new insights and perspectives for any music lover. Few books about music come so close to the truth about how it really comes into existence.” Paul Williams, founder of Crawdaddy magazine (2001)
“Whether for answering questions on music trivia or for developing a play list for an iPod, The Rock Song Index will provide any rock fan with plenty of satisfaction.” (Lawrence Looks at Books)
“Popular Music is a spectacular series, invaluable to music researchers, record collectors, reviewers, composers, performers and fans. The scope and accuracy of information featured throughout these Gale research guides is superb.”– Popular Culture in Libraries (1999)
After winning the Jerome Lowell Dejur prize for fiction at The City College of NY and the Deems Taylor award for journalism from ASCAP, Bruce Pollock moved into a highly successful career as a journalist, columnist, novelist, humorist, essayist, and lyricist. He served as an editor at Rock Magazine, Contemporary Music, The Funny Papers and Penthouse’s Bravo and contributed to such publications as The New York Times, Saturday Review, TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, Family Weekly, USA Today, Playboy, The Gannett Westchester Newspapers, and The Village Voice, before landing the dream assignment of creating a rock magazine. GUITAR: For The Practicing Musician would go on to become the most popular new music magazine launched in the 1980s. In the mid-nineties, with thirteen books to his credit and hundreds of essays and articles behind him, Pollock came up with another dream job, that of compilation producer and music historian at BMG Entertainment in New York City (now Sony BMG) where he worked for the next 12 years. He was also the sole editor of the esteemed annual volume, Popular Music: An Annotated Index of American Popular Songs (Gale Research) for 16 years.
BOOKS
In Their Own Words: Lyrics & Lyricists (Macmillan)
The Face of Rock & Roll: Images of a Generation (Holt)
When Rock Was Young: A Nostalgic Review of the Top 40 Era (Holt)
When the Music Mattered: Rock in the 1960s (Holt)
The Disco Handbook (Scholastic Press)
Housework for Men (Planet Books)
The Rock & Roll Fun Book (Scholastic Press)
Hipper Than Our Kids (Schirmer)
The Rock Song Index (Schirmer)
Working Musicians (Harper Collins)
The Rock Song Index: 2nd Edition (Routledge)
Playing for Change (Houghton-Mifflin) Novel
Me, Minsky & Max (Houghton-Mifflin) Novel
It’s Only Rock and Roll (Houghton-Mifflin) Novel
Editor: Popular Music: An Annotated Index to American Popular Songs, Vols. 7-24 (Gale, 1983-1999)
